by Marissa Rosenberg-Carlson<\/p>\n
To run Versailles, you have to be a journalist. Or so believes Catherine P\u00e9gard, the current president of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles, who spent most of her career as a political reporter. Her road to Versailles was uncommon. \u201cIn France, we aren\u2019t used to having different lives. But I\u2019m very lucky. This is my third life,\u201d said P\u00e9gard in an interview with Princeton University students on Thursday. But P\u00e9gard feels the same qualities are required in journalism and at Versailles. \u201cYou must be curious and inventive,\u201d she said. \u201cYou must know what [Versailles] is, understand what it is, and then you must tell the story,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9gard began her journalistic career at age twenty-three in 1977. In 1982, she started writing for the weekly political magazine\u00a0Le Point<\/em>, of which she became editor-in-chief in 1995. When right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy became president in 2007, he appointed her one of his advisors, she gave up journalism but kept its mindset. She saw herself as a \u201cjournalist for the President.\u201d She observed politics closely, said exactly what she thought, and did not toe the party line. People criticized her for collaborating with politicians, but she insisted she remained independent. \u201cI disagree with journalists who say, \u2018I never have lunch with politicians because I don\u2019t want to be influenced by them.\u2019 That means you are weak. If you are strong enough, you can eat with anybody and think what you want,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n When President Sarkozy nominated her to head Versailles in 2011, she brought this journalistic independence with her. Nominations to Versailles are usually political. P\u00e9gard\u2019s was not. In 2016, Socialist President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande took an uncommonly bipartisan stance to renew her contract. Entrusted with continuing to tell the story of Versailles, P\u00e9gard has sought to highlight how \u201cVersailles is the root of everything in France.\u201d The palace holds archives of political meetings, ceremonies, theater, painting, architecture, gardening, wars and revolutions. Still, history is not enough. In P\u00e9gard\u2019s view, \u201cyou must think of what it was, but also what it is for the people of today. You can\u2019t be in a dead museum.\u201d<\/p>\n In P\u00e9gard\u2019s journalistic mind, Versailles is a living thing. \u201cEverything changes here depending on the light, depending on the season,\u201d she said. The Hall of Mirrors is not her favorite place. \u201cBut if you are there at six o\u2019clock in the afternoon when the light is pink, nothing else is like that,\u201d she said. The Petit Trianon isn\u2019t her favorite place, either. \u201cBut when you are alone in the theater of Marie Antoinette, you can imagine what she was when she was in the scene,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Just as P\u00e9gard has discovered beautiful moments at Versailles, she also humbles herself before the things she hasn\u2019t yet discovered. She thinks she learned that from journalism. \u201cI was not supposed to come here. When I arrived at Versailles, I didn\u2019t know Versailles. I have everything to learn about it, and I am not finished,\u201d she said. She probably never will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Marissa Rosenberg-Carlson To run Versailles, you have to be a journalist. Or so believes Catherine P\u00e9gard, the current president of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles, who spent most of her career as a political reporter. Her road to Versailles was uncommon. \u201cIn France, we aren\u2019t used to having different lives. But I\u2019m very lucky. This … <\/p>\n